The Weather Channel (for iPhone)

The Weather Channel app provides everything you need to stay ahead of the elements. And now it includes a well designed Apple Watch integration.

By Max Eddy

11 Dec 2015, 8:36 p.m.

None of us will be able to bend the weather to our will like Sean Connery in 1998's The Avengers, or Thor in the other Avengers. Instead, we rely on weather apps like The Weather Channel's offering to keep us alert to the weather's whims. This excellently designed iPhone app provides all the weather information you need, and even works with Apple Watch.

Tune InThe newest iteration of the Weather Channel app has further beautified an already lovely experience. It's available for free in the App Store and is compatible with most current iOS devices, including the iPad, and now offers an Apple Watch app. I had no trouble loading the app onto my iPhone 6.

Your main screen shows the current temperature and conditions displayed over a large, bright photograph. The image is, usually, selected to match your current location, but it frequently draws from stock images. From here, you can also see what conditions other Weather Channel users are reporting and when the next round of precipitation is likely to occur.

Sometimes, you see an ad instead of a tasteful photo as the main page's background. These ads don't impede your ability to use the app, but they're not always pleasant to look at. That's in addition to banner ads throughout the app. You can pay $3.99 a year to remove these ads, which seems a bit steep to me. Yahoo!'s weather app is also built around a main page with stunning, geolocated photos, but it uses images pulled from Flickr and never, in my experience, an advertisement.

The ads are doubly annoying because the mPlus Rewards (formally mPoints) system is still embedded in the Weather Channel app. In earlier versions of The Weather Channel, mPlus was so irritating that I briefly considered setting fire to my phone. It is, thankfully, now optional, but its continued presence, in addition to banner ads, is annoying. Editors' Choice winner Weather Underground uses only small, unobtrusive ads in its app.

Note that The Weather Channel and Weather Underground are owned by the same company.

The rest of The Weather Channel app is displayed down a vertically oriented column of panels. As you move down, a handy arrow appears that zooms your view back to the top when tapped. Unfortunately, The Weather Channel does not allow you to remove or reorient panels in the app, meaning you'll have to scroll all the way down if you're looking for something specific.

While the main page is for taking a fast glance at current conditions, the rest of the app digs into nitty-gritty details. You'll see the temperature, position of the sun, sunrise and sunset times, wind speed and direction, humidity, dew point, barometric pressure, and current UV index. The app also includes Hourly and Daily forecast panels that can be expanded to show more detailed information. Notably, the Daily forecast extends out to 15 days. A Health section includes information about airborne allergens and illness.

Given its TV roots, it's no surprise that The Weather Channel includes video content and news articles in its app. It's a mix of weather news ("Significant Snow Due to New Storm") and tentatively weather-connected entertainment ("Puppy is No Match For Icy Street"). Newly added is a flagship mobile morning show with Al Roker. All of the videos are short, but I didn't find that they greatly contributed to my experience.

When you tire of all that vertical motion, you can swipe left and right to view the weather in other locales. Just tap the plus button at the top of the screen to search for a city. Saved locations are in an easily editable list below.

Beyond PredictionsThe latest trend in weather apps is crowd sourcing local weather reports from users. The aggregate of these local reports is displayed at the top of the app, but, if you want to add your own voice to the mix, you have to scroll nearly all the way to the bottom. Weather Underground puts its reporting tool up at the very top, within easy reach.

For when you want to see the weather with your own eyes, The Weather Channel has its radar view. The map is geo-located to your current position, but you can pan and zoom to your heart's content. Controls at the bottom pause and play a looping video of weather conditions in your area. The radar map also includes a Future Radar feature, which shows an animated prediction of upcoming conditions.

The radar map displays the temperature overlay by default, but you can choose from nine different overlays, each displaying different conditions like basic radar, clouds, and rain.

The competing weather app Dark Sky built its reputation on quality design, but its unique feature is weather alerts intended to warn you of precipitation before it hits the ground. I wasn't too impressed with it during my testing, as the alerts seemed inaccurate. I find the Weather Channel's alerts far more useful, and I like that I can chose the kind of alerts I want to receive—yes to real-time rain alerts but no to pollen alerts, for example.

For a quick glance at the current conditions and the day's forecast, you can add a Weather Channel widget to the Today section of the iOS notification tray. I like that The Weather Channel crams lots of critical information into a single forecast, but I much prefer the Weather Underground widget; it uses a clever graph to display an entire day's worth of information in remarkable detail.

Weather On Your WristLike many apps, The Weather Channel has added an Apple Watch app as well as a widget you can add to the watch face called a Complication.

The Weather Channel watch app has three screens, showing you current conditions, a weekend forecast, and the rising and setting times for the sun and moon. You can twist Apple Watch's digital crown while looking at the current conditions screen and see the day's weather prediction. Likewise you can wind or tap through the Weekend forecast with the crown to see the A.M. and P.M. conditions for Friday through Monday. The sun and moon screen is not interactive; if you want to see when the sun will rise next week or the day after tomorrow, you'll have to take out your phone.

The Complication lives on your watch face and shows the current chance of precipitation. That's handy, though if you want to see the temperature as well, you must add Apple's own weather Complication. The Weather Channel Complication is also compatible with Apple's Time Travel function, letting you wind time forward or backward from the watch face. As you move, you can see the conditions changing. It's a neat effect and a handy way to see past and future conditions at a precise time.

It's clear that a lot of thought went into the Weather Channel's Apple Watch app. It does a good job of presenting useful, actionable information and doesn't try to put everything on your wrist. However, I am surprised at how sluggish the app feels. During testing it stopped responding several times. I'm also surprised that you can't add a social weather report from the watch app.

Outlook SunnyI'm happy to see how much improved the Weather Channel is since I last reviewed it. The app provides a slick, well-designed experience along with all the information you could possibly need. The associated Apple Watch app is impressive, though still a bit sluggish in my testing.

While the Weather Channel is good, however, Weather Underground is better. It has fewer ads, offers a lot more customization, and employs clever graphs and graphics to great effect. Weather Underground remains our Editors' Choice, and it's what I checked this very morning before grabbing my rain boots.